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Please stop telling me I need to find someone. When you drop subtle hints that I’m going to be “left on the shelf” if I don’t do anything soon, it makes me feel older than my 22 years. When you say that I need to find my other half, it makes me feel as if I were missing a part of myself I never knew existed. When you remind me that such-and-such a friend now has a boyfriend, it makes me feel like I’m unloved—when I know that it’s far from the truth.Continue reading →

I first started cycling with my father not so much because I enjoyed it, but because, for the first time, it was something just the two of us did together.

On weekend mornings as my sister and I lay fast asleep, the sky still a sleepy grey, I’d hear our bedroom door creaking open and my father whispering in his gravelly voice, “Anybody want to cycle?” Continue reading →

I never thought that I would have depression.

It seemed like something only strangers had. Even when a close friend of mine struggled with depression a few years ago, I couldn’t relate to what she was going through. I just thought of it as a really low period some people had and would eventually get out of, if only they tried hard enough.

Depression was a faraway concept, and “depressed” was a word I used casually when I felt particularly sad. I didn’t understand depression—until it happened to me. Continue reading →

I used to consider traveling and its accompanying “find yourself” mantra overrated.

In the 2010 American romantic movie Eat Pray Love, the protagonist, a divorcee, escapes from her daily life in which she feels lost and confused, to “exotic” lands like India, where she finds inner peace and learns to love herself (as well as another man). I’ve always found the logic behind this movie problematic. The idea that one can simply run away from problems to lead a more carefree lifestyle, and return with everything somehow magically resolved is not how life works. Continue reading →

This is for all the mothers who love their children more than they will ever know.

For the mothers who sacrifice their independence, dreams and futures for that of their children’s. The mothers who want to utter the words ‘I love you, child’, but which instead comes out as: ‘Have you eaten yet?’ Continue reading →

This goes without saying for most if not all of us, but 2015 holds a particular resonance for me. It was a year of first’s laced with joy and threaded with pain–some reminisced with a soft smile and a wistful sigh, others remembered with downcast eyes and knitted brow.